We discovered Walrus and Carpenters last year, and now oysters on New Years’s Eve are on the way to becoming a new tradition here at Chelsea Gardens.  The fun begins when we head up to the roof in Tribeca to pick them up, hanging around with Jules, his mother, and other devotees, slurping a few on the half shell, and sipping a Rhode Island beer.

We pick them up on New Year’s Eve itself (it wasn’t raining this time!) but this time we probably arrived on the roof a little later than we should have.  We also enjoyed the ambiance and the conversation, so much that we got home later than we had planned.  By the time we had opened 5o some oysters, we found that we would be enjoying each of our two main courses in a different year.

My plate, just after finishing the first course.

• the wine was a wonderful French white, perfect for the oysters, Château de la Chesnaie Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2013

I wanted the second plate to be as elegant as the first, quite simple and very easy to put together fast.  Staying with seafood seemed like a good idea, especially since we might want some sparkling wine when midnight approached (I must have had some foreboding of our eating a very late dinner). I was inspired by an elegant recipe from Bon Appètit, ‘Linguine with Crab, Lemon, Chiles, and Mint’, and that’s how I found myself making my way through the mob of tourists inside Chelsea Market and picking up some fresh cooked crab at The Lobster Place.

• Afeltra linguine served with a sauce of olive oil, butter, lemon zest and juice, salt and black pepper, shallots from Keith’s Farm, garlic from from Migliorelli Farm, more than one fresh Fresno chile  from Manhattan Fruit Exchange, Maine Peekytoe crab leg meat from The Lobster Place, and fresh mint leaves from Manhattan Fruit Exchange
• the wine was an Italian sparkling, the excellent Lamarca Proseco with the gorgeous label (which always makes a wine taste better)